Buying Their Way Out Of Jail

The New York Times today has a couple of stories today about the power of money in our judicial system. One is about how a rich and influential defendant can marshal his personal and professional resources to buy his way out of criminal liability for the lives his actions have has ruined. The other is about Michael Skakel.

Skakel, it appears, is right on the brink of getting sprung for the purposes of a new trial regarding his alleged murder of Martha Moxley in 1975. The Times is quite impressed -- and, even, a little unsettled -- by the money spent by the Skakel side to make this possibility a reality.

They hired expensive lawyers, private investigators and expert witnesses, one at $250 an hour. They fired Mickey Sherman, the defense lawyer who failed to win his case in 2002, and hired Hubert J. Santos, a prominent Hartford lawyer. They brought in Theodore B. Olson, a solicitor general of the United States under President George W. Bush, to petition the Supreme Court. They tracked down witnesses in Tampa, Fla., and Spain. They hired lawyers to mount an offensive on news organizations that broadcast misinformation about Mr. Skakel and sued the celebrity news personality Nancy Grace for libel. The family's perseverance and deep pockets - Mr. Skakel's grandfather was an industrial magnate - have brought Mr. Skakel to a pivotal moment: Last month, a judge in Superior Court in Rockville, Conn., overturned the 11-year-old verdict. On Thursday, when Mr. Skakel appears in a Stamford courtroom for a bail hearing, he could walk free while he awaits a new trial.

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(Can I just say that, without making a determination on Skakel's guilt either way, I applaud just on general principles his team's having sued Nancy Grace? Thank you.)

As I said, the Times seems just a tad unnerved by what money can accomplish in the judicial system. This skepticism vanishes, however, elsewhere in the paper where we learnjust how easily Good Guy Jamie Dimon bought himself a settlement in the matter of J.P. Morgan Chase's involvement in the various mortgage scams that wrecked so many lives and fortunes, and damned near wrecked the world economy.

Mr. West, 48, a soft-spoken but imposing presence, resisted the overture. Pacing around the room with the phone pressed against his ear, people at the meeting later recalled, he told Mr. Dimon that the Justice Department would meet only if the bank came with a more generous offer than the $3 billion it had proposed to settle a narrow window of cases. "We don't want you to waste your time and we don't want to waste the attorney general's time," he told the bank chief, according to people in the room. Mr. Dimon agreed to raise his offer, prompting the government to postpone the lawsuit. Two days later, on Sept. 24, he arrived at the Justice Department in Washington, where the two sides worked toward a $13 billion settlement that was announced on Tuesday.

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Well, isn't that chummy? Mr. West, who is supposed to be the tough guy here, at least according to the Times, tells Dimon that $3 billion isn't enough. Two days later, Dimon adds another $10 million to the offer without blinking. And justice is served, probably with an apple in its mouth.

The Times then goes on to pretend that this settlement hits Wall Street "where it hurts the most," even though, among its other sweeteners, it buys the bank out of a potential $200 billion in actual liabilities, and even though a portion of the settlement may be...wait for it...tax deductable. How about we ask Jamie Dimon what would "hurt the most" -- negotiating his own fine or two-to-six at Danbury? Personally, I trust Michael Skakel more than I do Jamie Dimon.